SETUP-PHONES-PhoneFeaturePacks (6.0)

Owned by Merry Arpaia
Oct 17, 2024
7 min read

Phone Feature Packs

Phone Feature Packsare specifically designed add-on features to enable you to set up Polycom and Snom phones to work with a Switchvox PBX. The Phone Feature Pack enables many of Switchvox Applications right to your handset. The following must be in place before you use Phone Feature Packs to set up your phones:

  • Switchvox is up and running.

  • Your phones are on the same network as Switchvox.

  • You have a Phone Feature Pack for each phone.

  • Any Polycom phones you are setting up, must be running SIP firmware 1.6.7 or higher.

  • Any snom phones you are setting up, must be running snom firmware version 6.5.18 or higher.

  • You are comfortable with Switchvox updating each phone’s firmware as necessary. If you do not want a phone’s firmware updated, you need to set up that phone manually (not as part of this process).

  • You are comfortable with Switchvox setting each phone’s config authentication login and password, and its handset password. The config authentication login and password are randomly generated and can be found in the Configured Phones list. The handset password is always 456. If you do not want this information changed for a phone, you need to set up that phone manually (not as part of this process).

IMPORTANT: If your phone is not on the same network as Switchvox, or it does not have the required firmware, it cannot be discovered by Switchvox. If this is the case, see “Making Phones Visible to Switchvox”  page 67. If you have a Polycom 300 or 500 phone, you must set up your phone manually (you cannot use the Phones tool). For help, see the documentation for your phone.

The Phone Feature Packs tool has three main tabs: Unknown Phones, Unconfigured Phones, and Configured Phones. You must confirm each phone for configuration, then configure each phone with extension details.

To begin setting up phones on Switchvox, do the following:

  • Place each phone where it should be located, plug it into your network, and turn it on. It is helpful to note the MAC address of each phone, but it is not necessary. When each phone boots up (after you turn it on), Switchvox detects it and adds it to the Unknown Phones list. These are phones that Switchvox has seen on the network, but does not have control over.

  • In the Admin Suite, select Setup > Phones > Phone Feature Packs

The Phone Feature Packs page opens to the Unknown Phones tab. If a phone does not appear in the list, try rebooting the phone.

Unknown Phones (tab)

Unknown phones are the phones that Switchvox has found on your network, but they are not yet configured for use with Switchvox. These phones do not receive any configuration files from Switchvox. Phones that have not been detected on the network for more than 14 days will stop showing up in the Unknown Phones list.

  • Check the box next to each phone you want to configure, then click Confirm Checked Phones. Switchvox sends firmware and configuration files to the phone, then a command to reboot.

IMPORTANT: If you do not want to configure a phone, do not check its box. That ensures that the phone does not receive Switchvox configuration files. In particular, if you have more than one PBX on your local network, make sure that you do not confirm phones that are set up on another PBX. This overwrites the configuration of these phones, and they will no longer connect properly to the other PBX Phones.

  • Be sure that each phone has finished rebooting. This can take as much as 10 minutes, and it is important that it is finished before you move on to the next step. If the date and time are shown on the phone’s display, that indicates that it has finished rebooting.

After your phone has finished rebooting and is back online, it is in the Unconfigured Phones list. Now it needs to be assigned an extension.

Phone Model Not Reported.  Switchvox is not able to determine the phone model for some phones. Despite that, these phones can still be configured. During the configuration process, Switchvox updates the firmware on the phone (if necessary), and that helps to determine the model.

Unconfigured Phones (tab)

Unconfigured Phonesare the phones registered with Switchvox that can receive configuration files, but these phones do not yet have an assigned extension.

NOTE: The Config Authentication Login and Password shown on this page are used when the phone requests a current configuration file from Switchvox. This is different from the phone’s registration login and the extension’s login, and you can safely ignore this information.

To remove a phone from this list and put it back on the Unknown Phones list, check the box for that phone and click Reject Checked Phones.

To assign an extension to a phone, do the following:

  • Click the Modify icon

  • Enter an extension number, or search for the extension that you want.

  • After each phone has the correct extension, check its box and click Confirm Checked Phones.

Switchvox pushes out the final configuration to each phone, and sends a command to each phone to reboot again.

After your phone has finished rebooting and is back online, it is in the Configured Phones list. If you want to assign additional lines to this phone, you can do that on the Configured Phones page.

Configured Phones (tab)

Any phones you configured are now displayed under the Configured Phones tab on the Phone Feature Packs page. Each time a configured phone reboots, it receives configuration updates and its user’s specified Directory (see the Extension-Owner User Guide).To modify a configured phone, click its Modify icon.

Main Line. Set an extension and an alternate host for this phone.
Additional Lines. To add a line, enable it, then specify whether this is a Switchvox Extension or not, and then enter the extension information.

  • If it is a Switchvox extension, you just need to enter that extension number.

  • If it is not a Switchvox extension, you can enter host name, alternate host name (if available), Port, User ID, and Password.

Making Phones Visible to Switchvox

If Switchvox cannot discover your phone (i.e., you cannot see your phone in the Unknown Phones list), you need to manually point the phone to the Switchvox server. The following describes the process for Polycom and snom phones:

Polycom Phones

  • Reset the phone back to its factory defaults:

For Polycom models 320, 330, and 430: hold down the 1, 3, 5, and 7 keys simultaneously.
For other models: hold down the 4, 6, 8, and * keys until the phone prompts you for a password. Then press 4, 5, 6 on the keypad, then select Enter. Once the phone reboots, press Setup during the countdown screen. Then press 4, 5, 6, on the keypad, then select Ok. Go into Server Menu to find the settings.
The phone reboots with the factory settings.

  • Go to the Network Configuration for your phone: press Menu, 3,2, 456 (the password), Enter,1, 1. Scroll to Server and select it.

  • Set server type to http and server address to IP_ADDRESS_OF_YOUR_PBX/pc. For example, if your PBX has an external IP address of 192.100.0.1 then set the server address to 192.100.0.1/pc.

snom Phones

  • Reset the phone back to its factory defaults.

  • Set the Setting URL to ‘http://SWITCHVOX_IP_ADDRESS/pc/{mac}.xml. For example, if Switchvox's IP address is 192.100.0.1, the Setting URL is http://192.100.0.1/pc/{mac}.xml.

After those changes, make sure that the phone is rebooted. Rebooting can take as much as 10 minutes, and it is important that you let it finish completely. If the date and time are shown on your phone’s display, that indicates that your phone has finished rebooting.

When your phone reboots and comes back online, it appears in the Unconfigured Phones list in Phone Setup.

IMPORTANT: To configure phones that are external to your network, Switchvox must be accessible outside of your network over port 80. Please contact your network administrator for information about how to do this.

Phone Setup Options

From the Phone Feature Packs page, the Modify Phone Setup Options button allows you to modify the following setup options:

  • Alternate Host Default Option. If Alternate Host is not set, use the PBX’s external IP/hostname. YES indicates the phone uses the default for the Alternate Host option. The default is only applied if a phone does not have a setting in the Alternate Host option.

  • Security Option. Only accept calls from the PBX. YES indicates your Switchvox-configured phones should only accept calls from this Switchvox.

  • Digit Map Options.  When your phone gets configuration files from Switchvox, then Switchvox provides digit map settings for your phone based on the extension lengths your system uses and typical dialing requirements. 

    • Extension Length. This is the setting your digit map uses for dialing extensions on Switchvox. By default this is the length of the longest extension. You might change this if you have two Switchvoxes that are peered together and they use different extension lengths.

    • Use 10-digit Local Dialing. Some providers require 10 digits to be entered, even for local dialing. If this is the case for your provider, you should check this box.

    • Custom Digit Map.You can specify a custom digit map for Switchvox-configured phones. If you do this, Switchvox ignores all the other rules for creating a digit map, and pushes the custom digit map to your configured phones.

    • Custom Digit Map Timeout. You can specify a Timeout (in seconds) for each segment of your custom digit map. If there are more digit maps than timeout values, the default value of 3 is used. If there are more timeout values than digit maps, the extra timeout values are ignored.

Otherwise, when your phone gets configuration files from Switchvox, then Switchvox provides digit map settings for your phone based on the extension lengths your system uses and typical dialing requirements.

  • Phone Discovery Options: DHCP Sniping. Polycom phones with SIP Applications prior to 2.2.2 do not support DHCP INFORM. To configure these older phones, Switchvox must be more aggressive, usurping your network’s DHCP server. After the phone is upgraded, Switchvox returns to normal behavior. It’s probably safe to leave this option enabled, but if your DHCP server reacts poorly when older phones are configured, disabling this option might help.

  • NTP Options. Custom NTP Server. You can specify an Network Time Protocol Server to set the time on your Switchvox-configured phones.

    Rel6.0

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